Exton

Jeb is tearing through our enemies like a pissed-off, furry buzzsaw. He makes it look easy, but I can see that's he's bleeding from half a dozen or more slashes. His roar reverberates through the woods and if I was a werewolf, I'd tuck my tail between my legs and run like hell. Either that, or I'd tuck my head between my legs and kiss my ass goodbye.

Raina switched to her broadsword after she impaled the old man's would-be killer, and she's making coleslaw of anyone who has balls enough to get close to her.

I tease another were into range, then Johnny strikes like a cobra. I give it a half-twist as I pull it back, gouging more meat from the wound. He sways, but remains upright. I go for the gap between neck and shoulder, slicing deep. A fountain of blood explodes from the wound - ah, arterial spray! - and he falls, finished.

Jeb has taken down two of his opponents, Raina has two, I have two and the old man has three. How many of these bastards are there, anyway?

Raina's horse rears, pounding another were with steel-hard hooves. With a Viking oath - I think - Raina buries her broadsword in its skull, then jerks it free with a twist. That one's not getting up again.

"Raina!" The cry comes from the old man. Raina looks and hurls herself from her horse's back. The old man lets fly and the were who was clinging to her horse's rump intercepts the fireball he flings. It knocks him a good ten feet away and he screams as he burns.

Then damned if Raina doesn't just casually mount again! - but there's no need. The Big Bad Wolf has made one mistake too many and I unzip his guts with one slash.

We look around. Okay, no more fighters, so where the fuck is Jean-Marc?

Mortuis looks around with those cold gray eyes and I feel a shiver run down my spine. God help me if he ever looks at me like that.

He turns to Raina. "Burn him out."

Raina nods, and Puff lifts off her back like magic. If I live for another hundred and fifty-odd years, I'll never get used to that.

The dragon lifts off like a really big kite, and suddenly it's halitosis so bad it's combustible. (Don't tell Dragon I said that.) The house catches quickly and we cover all the exits. The slimy bastard is so not getting away.

We watch and the house burns… and burns… and fucking burns! It's not like Jean-Marc to go down with the ship. What the hell is going on?

"Here, here!" It's one of the shifters we left in the woods to bat clean-up. Damned if the motherfucker didn't have an escape tunnel, and one of our guys caught him slipping out.

Guess he didn't know that an escape tunnel is supposed to come out miles from the source….

Jean-Marc is trying to break through a ring of our guys. Raina shouts, "Let him go! He's mine!" and the shifters open a hole in their circle. He bursts through, running like the hordes of Hell are on his heels - and truthfully, he's not that far off.

Raina rises in the stirrups, twirling the Fenris rope like Will Rogers. He bursts into a clearing and she throws.

It seems to happen in slow motion. It seems to take forever for that loop of slim, insignificant cord to come down, but come down it does, and Jean-Marc is in the center of it. Raina grins and jerks hard, tightening the lariat around him, up under his arms, then she tugs him off his feet and urges her horse into a furious gallop.

Ever heard The Battle of New Orleans? The chorus, I mean. It goes like this:

We ran through the briars and we ran through the brambles
And we ran through the bushes where a rabbit couldn't go.

That's what Raina does with Jean-Marc. She drags him over big sharp rocks, through an ice-cold stream, through a briar patch, and I think she manages to bash him against every tree in the forest at least once.

Revenge is better than Christmas….

And it's still a long, long way back to the Manse.